The complete source for building, designing, and remodeling green homes
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Insights from a Practical Passive House
The office of Birdsmouth Design Build is located in a renovated, 850-square-foot Pullman rail car in downtown Portland, Or. This wasn’t always the case, but at a point when the…
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A Look at Low Carbon Homes
“If you are building a house in 2019, all of the embodied energy gets burned this year, which means that all of the carbon associated with that embodied energy is…
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An Intro to the Control Layers of a Wall
The first time I came by the term “control layer” was in a 2010 Building Science Corporation article called “The Perfect Wall," written by the firm's principal, Joseph Lstiburek. In…
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Step Flashing With Exterior Insulation
Step flashing a roof to a wall with continuous exterior insulation requires a decision: Do you bring the step flashing back to the structural wall sheathing behind the continuous exterior…
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A Pretty Good House in the Sierra Nevada
Though he landed his first job in architecture while still in high school, architect Jeff Adams's path to designing high-performance homes wasn’t a straight line. When his father encouraged him…
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Indoor Air Quality and VOCs
Do you know what activity we spend the most time doing? The answer is sleep. According to the Wall Street Journal, we spend more time sleeping than we do working,…
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Designing for a Hot, Humid City
If you are interested in high-performance building for hot and humid climates, you probably have heard of Austin, Texas-based architect Peter Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer is an environmentalist, a building scientist, and…
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Kickout Flashing: Often Overlooked and Under Appreciated
We were building a new deck on the back of a house when we had to break for a couple days because of heavy rain. When we returned, the client…
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Walls that Work
What are the most common reasons walls fail? What is the simplest way to improve the average wall? When it comes to wall design, are there any dangers in following…
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Green Building Bulletin Board
A GBA reader suggested that we create a regional list of resources for green builders and homeowners. The list will include materials suppliers, consultants, and builders, separated by region. The…
